


flowers are weak but alive and so are you

by chaoticsandstorm



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Fueguchi Hinami-Centric, Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, author hates editing, ayahina is minor but present, don't be rude you guys I SAID the ayahina is minor, hinami-centric, no editing we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 03:08:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15921558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticsandstorm/pseuds/chaoticsandstorm
Summary: It happened in a whirl. Shattered glass and upturned tables, all painting a broken picture that becomes more disconcerting with each unearthed clue, like precious gems. Your sister screams and shouts, breaks all the bones in her fist when she punches the wall, then collapses in a sobbing heap.(in which hinami grows up and finds her strength)





	flowers are weak but alive and so are you

**Author's Note:**

> like,, minor blood/gore for this but no other warnings except for my atrocious and completely characteristic lack of editing.  
> a huge part of hinami's character is her paralysing fear of being weak, and i wanted to play around with that but i'm afraid i didn't do very well. anyways, enjoy  
> NOBODY @ ME ABOUT THE COMMAS

You are fourteen when you are first taught weakness is a curse.

The investigator who does it has a maniacal gleam in his eyes, like he isn’t all there. He laughs as he swings down and cuts your mother’s head clean off her shoulders. You try to scream. The kind boy with the black hair holds you down and shakes his head with wide eyes. The blood sprays everywhere, spatter coating the walls of the alley and landing inches away from your hiding spot. In this moment, you have never been so terrified, never been so heart-achingly exhausted. Losing one parent was enough. Losing both is an unimaginable horror. Except you are here, now, living it. Weak and haunted, but alive.

Your sobs are muffled by the boy's hand. The investigators keep walking.

* * *

 Blazing kakugan and crystal-like wings stretching out behind her. Your sister cuts a striking figure like that, juxtaposed against the darkness of the tunnel and the blinding white of your father’s desecrated kagune remnants.

“Well?” she demands, hands curled into fists and shoulders heaving. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

Her words are hurled like knives, unrelenting and brutal. She doesn't notice she is bleeding. The red spills into the valleys of her skin, clings to the edge of her mouth and drips from numb fingertips. She wears horror like a second skin, tangles with violence like an old lover. She is a creature of the night. Brutal. Hardened. Bloody. She is a sweet girl whose voice trembled and cracked when she announced that they could move in together, just the two of them, wouldn’t that be nice? A sweet, kind girl who chokes down her friend’s poison and only curses at the bird sometimes because she knows how it upsets you, this girl, this creature, this monster, this person.

Your sister is trying her best to help in the only way she knows how. She is bloodying her knuckles and waving her kagune in the air like dangling crystals waiting to descend like a hailstorm of jagged glass and pain, waiting for the cue, the word. It strikes you in one blow. There is no way to make her understand. Violence is her mother tongue. It is a language difficult to unlearn, especially when you so often rely on it for survival.

The investigator staggers to his feet. You remain fixed on your sister, eyes red with tears and the veins coursing through your sclera.

“I didn’t _care_ about getting revenge or not!” you cry, cry, always crying. “I was just _sad_!”

* * *

 A parrot that refuses to stop talking. Haircuts in a messy bathroom. Your brother, with his shy smile and endless lies. Your sister, with her rabbit charms and bloody hands. They are a family. Even the manager who makes delicious coffee, the cashier with a full-belly laugh and war stories, the barista with the sharp jaw and gentle eyes. The boy who swears too much and the girl who does cartwheels in the backroom, they fit somewhere in there too. It’s messy and slap-dash, but it’s yours. Your sister shares smiles just for you, no matter how much she curses at the bird. Your brother is soft and helps you with kanji.

Of course, your brother leaves and your sister is heartbroken. They aren’t even your siblings, really. Just two people who happened to be fond of you. It happened in a whirl. Shattered glass and upturned tables, all painting a broken picture that becomes more disconcerting with each unearthed clue. Your sister screams and shouts, breaks all the bones in her fist when she punches the wall, then collapses in a sobbing heap. You watch it all unfold from the steps, wishing your brother's books had told you what to do.

You are weak. You could not prevent it from happening any more than you could protect your mother.

* * *

 The writer has mint green hair that swishes gently around her chin. Her spectacles are too large for her face.

“You are weak.” She smiles with a gently tilted head and bloody teeth. “It is your fault that you could not protect the ones closest to you.”

She makes a proposal you cannot refuse. You can join Aogiri and become strong, or languish in Anteiku and be of no use to anyone. Simple enough, in theory. Anteiku has been good to you and their ideals align closest to yours, closest to those of your deceased parents, and you cannot forget the endless kindness from all of their employees. But Anteiku was weak. Anteiku burned. Your parents were murdered in alleyways and their blood poured into gutters and drains. You do not want to be weak like them, a little girl unable to stop terrible things from happening to the ones you love, unable to do anything but watch in frozen silence.

You agree.

* * *

 You meet your sister's brother in the catacombs underneath the city, death and decay seeping into every orifice. You are scared. This is not what you thought it would be, not quite as noble as the writer made it out to be. This is not one of your brother's novels. This is real.

Your hands shake throughout the meeting. You cannot keep your eyes from darting around desperately, assessing threats, seeking escape routes.  The boy is quiet and stalks forward with the well-worn confidence of a predator accustomed to being at the top of the food chain. He has his hands in his pockets and brushes past you without acknowledgement.

Two weeks later, you save his life with your hearing, and he stares at you with something like shock. Your chest heaves and you can't stop coughing blood, but you are grinning more widely than you have in years. This is why you came. You are becoming strong now, can protect people now. He is just the start.

The boy with the dark purple hair leaves you a package the day after. It's a parcel of meat straight from the thigh, smelling fresh and tender. You smile at the gruff _thank you_ note that accompanies it.

It's the beginning of something.

* * *

 Your brother dies in a raid. You don't want to talk about it.

* * *

Staying with Aogiri, you learn. Staying with Aogiri, you become strong. Staying with Aogiri, you learn things you don't want to and do things you don't want to, all for a cause you aren't sure you believe in.

You are growing stronger. That is all that matters.

_(No matter what your mind says)_

* * *

A group of rival ghouls corner you, one day. The boy with the purple hair- your sister's brother- he tries, he fights, and you fight your hardest too, eyes blazing and voice breaking as he screams _leave her alone_ , but in the end you are still weak. They deliver you right into the hands of the CCG. The boy is left behind.

Things are hard in Cochlea. Hunger makes you sluggish and dazed. _Give us information_ , the Doves ask. _Give us information_ , the prisoners ask.

You are hungry. You are tired. You are hysterical while wondering if the boy made it out, if he's okay, if the others are okay, if your brother is really dead, but the one thing you are not is weak. So you stall, you deny, you make up outrageous lies. Their patience wears thin. They send an investigator in a last-ditch attempt to force you to reveal your secrets before you are killed.

Your brother comes down one day, white hair and spectacles perched on his face. His eyes are wide, tinged with only the faintest hint of remembrance, and that is more curiosity than anything else. You had heard, in Cochlea, that he had survived. Even before that, there were whispers among the underground, spoken in isolation where the precious slivers of information won't leak out.

He settles in the interrogation chair and cracks open a folder, begins reading it out. They sent your brother to make you divulge your secrets.

You are not weak. You know how to keep a secret. Looking at him though, faced with his earnest words and a chance to do some good for once, it doesn't feel like a weakness to let him leave with a few whispered words.

Your brother is alive. He is not the same. Then again, neither are you. Neither is your sister.

The charade continues. He sits in the interrogation chair to ask you a question, you sometimes answer and sometimes do not. The CCG makes use of you either way. Rumours spread around Cochlea that _Yotsume_ is a traitor, a liar, weak. A fight breaks out at feeding time. Three inmates are killed. Apparently, the topic was on whether you are a Dove informant or not.

Most know you are. The same deal stands for all, information or death. You refuse to die. You made the smart choice. You cannot grow strong and cannot protect anyone if you are dead.

It is sickening, but you have to make your peace with it as your execution is scheduled not long after. You do not cry. You simply curl into a ball on the floor and wait with weary eyes for your executioners to arrive. 

One night, sirens begin to blare. You jolt upright from the floor to find your door is slowly sliding open. He meets you with a weak smile, like he is faintly nauseous, and you punch him right in the gut for being _so damn stupid._

You leave with him, and your sister does the same right back to you, but ruffles your hair afterwards. She leaves you with the boy of the gruff _thank you_ notes, and you launch yourselves into battle.

You are not weak anymore. You can protect people now. You can survive now.

You are strong.

* * *

You cough up blood and choke on it, the heavy cloying scent hanging in the air so thickly you are surprised the battle hasn't ended just to hunt down the source of it. Your breaths come in death rattles, shaking your chest and sending pain shooting throughout your body. You are at peace.

 _Children should always be protected,_ you tell your sister, eyes fixed on her stomach.

Your sister holds back a choked sob, one hand stretched towards you, who has just barely turned eighteen.

 _You are still a child too_ , is what no one says, because everyone knows it isn't quite true.

The blood pools around your body.

* * *

 Your sister, your brother, their baby is born. Her skin is as red as a lobster's and she slobbers all over your shoulder when you hold her, but at barely two days old she is already the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Her name is Ichika. She is proof good things can come of bad situations. 

The war ends. The fight ends. It throws your world out of balance because you have never know a world without war, a world where young ghouls don't have to sell their souls just to live for one more day, but the more used to it you grow the more you fall in love.

You can walk freely down the street. You can stop in gardens and smile at the people maintaining them. You stopped by a book store one day, and told the cashier you were a ghoul just to test his reaction. He never reached for the phone.

The boy with the _I love you_ notes walks with you in public now. He grumbles and complains when you take him shopping, but doesn't put the horrible t-shirt back on the rack. Instead, he drops it directly into the basket and looks away, hand secure in yours. You cook for him sometimes. He sleeps on your lap during the day, when the two of you are tired and unaccustomed to being awake during sunlight hours. You are both still anxious, and haunted with the lingering ghost of paranoia whenever you leave the house, but every day there is more and more proof that the sun has finally come out.

You teach at a school now. The students don't love reading in quite the same way you always did, but it is enough to see young ghouls finally learning to read, eyes wide with concentration and just a hint of wonder. The work is healing. It closes a gap in your heart you weren't aware existed. Your mother died before she could properly raise you, but helping mentor the children gives you a sense of closure. The protectiveness of your students, the pride in their learning and growth, is how your mother would have felt. Teaching brings you closer to her than you have been in years and years and years. It drives your work now, giving you a purpose beyond surviving. 

The fight is nearly over. The war is done for good. You are strong, but there is no need for strength anymore, only kindness. It is the world you wished for when you were younger but believed would never come. You are not quite sure what to do about this. So much of your life has revolved around seeking strength, seeking power, in order to protect the ones you love. Now, they are no longer in danger, and there is no purpose for the strength you amassed. Still, it is not all bad. You have your work now. You have your lover, and a spare room for him in your apartment. Your brother and sister are both alive, with their baby Ichika. 

The world is still in ruins but it is healing. You are still hurt, but you are healing too.

You don't need to be strong anymore. Just alive.

 

**Author's Note:**

> my goal in life is to make 'author hates editing' a proper tag. i'm so sorry for you poor guys.  
> please leave kudos or a comment or something to help me out


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